And, of course, after he had finished with Sam Markham.
Chapter 82
What are you going to do if he isn’t home? asked the voice in her head. Are you just going to sit in his driveway and wait for him like the desperate stalker you are?
“Shut up,” Cindy said. But another voice—a voice that sounded a lot like Amy Pratt’s—replied, Maybe I will.
The real question, said the first voice, is what are you going to do if your handsome soldier is home?
Cindy had no answer.
OCD stalker, chimed both voices in unison, and Cindy pumped up the volume on the radio. It was a Led Zeppelin song. Cindy couldn’t remember its name. All their titles have nothing to do with the lyrics, she thought, and began racking her brain for the answer. She became irritated when she couldn’t find it, but was nonetheless thankful that the voices in her head were finally silent.
Cindy took the back roads and turned onto Route 264 just outside town. She already knew the way to Edmund Lambert’s house—had unconsciously memorized the directions from all the time she spent staring down at his property on Google Earth. If she hurried, she figured she could make it in about half an hour.
But what would she do once she got there? And what was it about this Edmund Lambert that made her act so crazy; made her drive out, uninvited, to his house in the middle of nowhere so late at night?
Again, Cindy had no answer. Only a scene from an imaginary movie: a modern-day Gone with the Wind in which she saw herself rushing down a flight of stairs into Edmund Lambert’s arms—spinning kisses and rustling petticoats, then mad, passionate lovemaking on an Oriental rug as the music swelled around them.
The Led Zeppelin song fit perfectly.
Led Zeppelin? asked Amy Pratt in her head. Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler doing it to Led Zeppelin?
Impulsively, Cindy changed the station—old school hip-hop, Naughty By Nature’s “OPP.”
Cindy let out a laugh and pumped the volume louder. It had to be fate, she thought—Bradley Cox, the explosion, Scarlett O’Hara all at once a distant memory of a role she once played back in Greenville.
“You down with OCD?” Cindy sang. “Yeah, you know me!”
Oh yeah, Cindy Smith was beyond obsessed.
Chapter 83
The General laid Markham on the kitchen table, pulled back his eyelids, and studied his pupils. Still unconscious—Will be for a while, he thought—but best to bind his hands and feet and leave him in the workroom while he attended to Cox.
True, the young man hadn’t been in the chair as long as the other soldiers, but the General hoped he would understand and be ready to accept his mission nonetheless. If not, the General would have to make him understand. Unlike the others, there wasn’t enough time now to indulge his limited intellect.
The General smiled as the song transitioned beneath his feet, and set his handgun on the kitchen counter next to the pair of Glocks he’d taken from the FBI agents. Then he tied Markham’s hands and feet together with the length of clothesline he’d set on the table before leaving.
Be a good boy and carry that rope for me, okay?
C’est mieux d’oublier….
Everything was going according to the Prince’s new plan; and when Markham was secure, the General washed his hands and splashed his face with cold water. He could feel the wound on his chest had split open again; could see that it had bled through the gauze and was beginning to spot his light-blue button-down shirt. There would be more blood, yes, but still he would have to change into his priestly robes. The ceremony of things demanded it.
The General toweled off his face and crossed to the cellar door—a heavy, steel door with recessed hinges and two dead bolts that he had installed himself. He unlocked them, the music instantly louder as he opened the door—but something was off; something about the light on the stairs was—
And then the naked man was coming for him.
Bradley Cox, smeared with sweat and blood, rushed up the cellar stairs shrieking like a cat—his left hand outstretched before him, his right holding a small ax high above his head. The General backed away at once—didn’t have time to wonder how Cox escaped and found the ax in the workroom—and moved his head just in time to avoid the downward strike. But the blade caught him on his right pectoral muscle—sliced through his shirt, the gauze, and took out a nice chunk of the tattooed 9 underneath.
The General let out a grunt but kept moving—ducked a sideward swipe to his head and then brought his fist up hard on Cox’s jaw. The young man cried out and staggered backwards—tried to swing the ax again—but the General caught his arm and hyperextended it at the elbow. A loud snap echoed through the kitchen, and Bradley Cox dropped the ax, howling in pain. The General grabbed him by the face and slammed him against the wall.
“I’m gonna kill you, Lambert!” Cox cried, slumping hysterically to the floor—but before he could recover, the General picked up the ax and swung it down hard. Cox raised his left hand just in time, and the General caught him on the forearm with the wooden handle. Another snap as the bones shattered, and the General brought down the ax again, this time on the young man’s right shoulder—chopped through his trapezius and split his collarbone like it was a stick of kindling wood.
Bradley Cox’s screams shook the entire house, both his arms useless now as he flailed about on the floor—but the General did not pause. He pulled out the ax and tossed it onto the kitchen table, the blood from the young man’s wound spraying his jeans as he picked him up by the hair and threw him headfirst down the cellar stairs.
Bradley Cox was barely conscious when the General reached him—but conscious enough, the General thought, to understand what was coming next.
“You will know him when he comes for you,” the General said as he dragged him down the darkened hallway. “You are part of the nine, and there is no turning back from your mission now.”
Chapter 84
Music—that song, “Dark in the Day”—and screaming. No. Not real. Something from a dream. Can’t see the pictures. Only silence now and big gaps of black behind me. Time. Moving forward. I have returned, but it’s raining….
Markham’s eyes fluttered open to a haze of yellow light. He was on his side; felt something hard beneath his right shoulder, and could hear the sound of running water.
Crappy hotel mattresses, he thought. Someone in the shower—Michelle?
He licked his lips and swallowed hard. His throat was parched and his mouth tasted like chemicals. He was about to reach for the glass of water on the nightstand, but in the next moment the pain kicked in at the base of his skull. He couldn’t touch it; couldn’t move his arm—his wrists for some reason felt glued together.
Groggily, he turned his head, and the yellow haze blurred into movement—into what looked like an arm and pair of buttocks pulsing out at him from the shadows.